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Friends and family stand in silence at a memorial for Jonathon Parker at Deer Valley High School in Antioch, Calif., on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020. Parker, age 16, was shot on January 31 in the parking lot of Deer Valley High School following a basketball game. PParker died the next day. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

Prayer candles are illuminated for Jonathon Parker at Deer Valley High School in Antioch, Calif., on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020. Parker, age 16, was shot on January 31 in the parking lot of Deer Valley High School following a basketball game. Parker died the next day. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

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Prayer candles are placed in the shape of a heart for Jonathon Parker at Deer Valley High School in Antioch, Calif., on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020. Parker, age 16, was shot on January 31 in the parking lot of Deer Valley High School following a basketball game. Parker died the next day. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group

A message written by his cousin expresses the love Jonathon D'wayne Parker brought to his family and others.

Friends and family stand at a memorial for Jonathon Parker at Deer Valley High School in Antioch, Calif., on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020. Parker, age 16, was shot on January 31 in the parking lot of Deer Valley High School following a basketball game. Parker died the next day. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

Lacey Gunn, 15, of Antioch, places prayer candles into the shape of a heart at a memorial for Jonathon Parker at Deer Valley High School in Antioch, Calif., on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2020. Parker, age 16, was shot on January 31 in the parking lot of Deer Valley High School following a basketball game. Parker died the next day. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

Yet inside that rugged exterior, his family said, beat the heart of a gentle “homebody.”

That, as much as anything, is what pains Parker’s family, a week after he was fatally wounded by gunfire that broke out in the Deer Valley High School parking lot following a basketball game between the host Wolverines and Antioch High. Parker rarely attended such events.

Family and friends of Jonathan Parker say his body was massive but his heart was tender (Photo courtesy Margarita Gurule).

“My nephew never wanted to hurt anybody,” his aunt, Aurora Solorio, said. “He loved everyone. I am not saying this because he is my nephew; it is because this is who John John is.”

Police said they continue to investigate the Jan. 31 shooting, which happened following a fight among students as they walked through the parking lot after the game. They have not identified any suspects or announced any arrests.

Nobody is feeling the pain more so than Parker’s mother, Alizcia Gurule.

“She’s torn apart — they were stuck at the hip,” Margarita Gurule, Alizcia’s sister, said. “Whatever she needed done, he did it for her. He cleaned the house for her. He wanted to make sure his mom was happy. He would do it because he would know in his heart that she is working hard full-time and going to school.”

The family said Jonathon rarely went out, preferring to hang out at home with family or at his father’s place in Pittsburg. He enjoyed playing video games and riding his bike, they said.

Friday nights when most teens were out with their friends, Jonathon was almost always home with his mom and two brothers, enjoying dinner, a movie or playing board games like Monopoly or chess, Solorio said.

“Jonathon was a very, very extraordinary teenager,” she said. “He didn’t do things like normal teenagers. He and his mom had a very close bond.

“He was like any other kid, but he was an old soul,” Solorio added. He loved coin collecting and he and my dad would sit for hours looking at coins.”

Parker’s family said they don’t know what happened that fateful night and they are still in shock as they try to make plans for the funeral services. They do know that they are unhappy with the security at the school that night.

Antioch Unified School District Superintendent Stephanie Anello called it a time of “unimaginable sorrow” at the school and said it is trying to “make sense of the chaos.” She also said security was not light.

“The game was staffed with more staff than most other games as the school anticipated a large crowd due to the fact that DV was playing a sister school and is undefeated,” Anello said in an email Friday. “In the 24 years since Deer Valley opened, the amount of staffing has been adequate, and there was absolutely no indication that someone was planning to commit such a heinous act. That being said, we are reviewing all of our safety procedures and are actively working with law enforcement.”

Police said they have been inundated with cell phone videos of the incident, some of which have been enhanced by technological experts to help search for clues, Antioch police Lt. John Fortner said.

“It’s unique in that the numbers of videos we have is so many,” Fortner said. “So you have that, and you have a lot of people who were in the area when the shooting happened. When you have that, you have a lot of information and a lot of disinformation. We’re working through that, and it’s a tedious process.”

Teachers and friends have said Parker’s was a giving spirit. A week before he died, Parker asked his mother to borrow food to help a family friend in need.

“He came home to my sister’s kitchen and got oatmeal, peanut bread and other food,” Solorio said. “He said my friends and their family are hungry, so he took them that food.”

Solorio called Parker “Johnny Angel” after the 1960s song made popular by Shelley Fabares, but his two brothers called him Mufasa after the long-maned lion from “The Lion King.”

Margarita Gurule said she called him “my Jolly Green Giant.”

All of which makes what happened to him seem so unreal to his family.

“We want justice for Jonathon; my sister will never hold her son and be able to tell her son she loves him and kiss him on the forehead,” Solorio added. “We will never get to know all he could have accomplished — see him go to a dance, walk for graduation. I am not going to let this go until my nephew gets justice. This is not OK.”

Judith Prieve is an East Bay journalist. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she has worked as a reporter, features editor and assistant metro editor at newspapers in Wisconsin and Northern California and has been at what is now the Bay Area News Group for more than 25 years.